Page 46 of Five

Chapter Fourteen - Five

“I didn’t mean it that way,” I call out. But I’m talking to orange-red tail lights through a hazy cloud of dust as she steals my rental car and leaves me out at her family farm. Abandoned.

I trudge down the driveway in the dark. Princess Shrike was a lot easier to manage when she was six, that’s for sure. There’s a little bit of moon out tonight, so at least I’m not gonna trip over something random and break my neck.

Still. I sigh. This trip wasn’t supposed to be this way. None of this shit was supposed to happen. Just a quick pop into Denver, then back on the plane to London so I could get back to business.

When I get to the edge of the driveway, I stop at the gate. The Shrikes almost never close this old thing. It’s tall, and metal, and has electricity hooked up via solar. Spencer Shrike is a pragmatist. Anyone with a truck can blow through his gate. So they stopped using it a long time ago. It only acts as an alert system now. Motion sensors set off the security system when you go through it. I disabled that this morning using the app.

But what he didn’t do… is unhook the solar. And the solar power controls the app that operates the motion sensors. And where there’s an app… I allow a devious grin build on my face… there’s a way inside.

If your name is Five Aston, that is.

My father is a freak of a genius, much more so than me. But my father learned most of his skills before the apps got really sophisticated. I’ve been building them practically since I was born. I know my way around everything you can think of. Dating sites, restaurant guides, email, video conferencing, music players, corporate log-ins. You name it, I’ve corrupted it to my advantage. I have back doors in more than ten thousand seemingly harmless applications.

But I also have my finger on the pulse of banks. Governments. Media. Hospitals.

Yeah. That makes me a little scary to some people. People like those men down in Denver last night. They know what I’m really capable of. No one but me knows that. Not even my father knows that. Not even my grandfather knows that. But these people can take a good guess. They want me and if they can’t have me… well, I’m sure they’re thinking the world is better off without a Five Aston if they can’t control him.

I’m thinking they’re a little crazy.

I feel my way through a hydrangea bush until I find the mounting apparatus for the gate electronics system. Then I pick up a rock, smash it against the little plastic clips that hold the top panel on it, pull out my phone and the little white charger cord from my pocket, and hook myself up.

My fingers fly across my screen, typing in commands until a bright blue screen appears with the words ‘Shrike Family.’

Take that, Spencer.

I maneuver my way through, clicking off the cameras I want disabled, then close everything back up and make my way back to the house.

If I’m stuck out here, well… I might as well make the most of it. I have the front door camera on a timer to black out when it senses my approach, then turn back on nine seconds later. So I gotta hustle. Spencer’s trigger is ten seconds of downtime. Sometimes this place gets severe power fluctuations during storms, so he’s learned to let that ten seconds slide and avoid a string of needless alarms.

No one but him knows that. Well, except me.

I grin again.

But I’m not supposed to know.

He doesn’t know me at all if he thinks I didn’t hack every single system he’s got running out here. Back when I was ten.

My grin turns into a guffaw as I make my way towards the house. The camera mounted on the roof blinks, then shuts off. And I start running. I hit the door four seconds later, punch in the entry code, and make my way in with one second to spare. Inside, this whole scenario repeats. It feels a little bit like playing Mission: Impossible, except there’s no cool red laser lights for added visual.

Twenty seconds later I’m on the stairs.

There are no cameras in the bedrooms. Outside every window, trained on every low-hanging tree limb, on the top of the porch where I once met the princess to stargaze when we were kids… yes. All those places. Just in case anyone was gonna get any funny ideas about sneaking in for some middle-of-the-night fun.

Spencer Shrike is looking at you, Five Aston.

Her bedroom door is open. It’s got a pink crown painted on it that says ‘Princess Rory’ in sparkly glitter. I shine my phone on it to get that sparkle effect before I enter.

I made that for her when I was eleven. She put it on her door and never took it down.

Even when you abandoned her.

I didn’t abandon her, for fuck’s sake. It was the best choice at the time.

At least that’s what I told myself. But this trip home is making me second-guess all those choices now.

I walk in the room and take it in. My princess has a room fit for a princess. Ronnie painted up her room in a whimsical fairy-tale theme, long time ago. She did this for all her girls. Even Sparrow and Starling got painted murals, only their rooms were all birds and cherry trees. Even Kate and my little sister got painted rooms.